Sunday, May 5, 2013

Silent Sundays

Several months ago I started what I'd like to call Silent Sundays.

Ritual and tradition don't hold a big place in my life, but Silent Sundays are (often) a welcome and needed part of my week. Some would describe this time as antisocial; I would lean more toward a reboot. Five days a week I talk (or sing) virtually non-stop for at least 8 hours straight... most of the year closer to 10 hours. I am a one-woman show of instruction, stand-up, and melodrama, all centered around making music. My 5 seconds (oh wait... those are minutes?) in between shows are filled with building relationships, primarily with students (but sometimes even adults!), through encouraging, reminding, teasing, correcting. Much of the year my Monday-Friday gig extends into Saturday. Before and after, I'm flooded with information on the radio, TV, and my all too precious laptop and iPhone. Every second of the day my brain is on and active.

And so I started Silent Sundays. Not a clever name (but a fabulous display of alliteration), I gift myself the opportunity to reset my mind, my ears, my throat, and just be. 

Some Sundays that looks like catching up on my Oprah magazines that have a tendency to stack up. Sometimes it means tending to my gardens and yard. Sometimes it's yarn. Sometimes it's literally just an alternation between sitting and napping. My Sundays are each their own incarnation of my personal holiday, but they all share that special ingredient: silence. Today I started with coffee on the porch, then moved to a warm spot in the sun. I sat in my blue adirondack listening to the soft ring of my wind chimes, the bird in my neighbor's tree calling to another, a faint hum of bees on my salvia, somewhere in the distance a car. A curl from my ponytail tickled my neck in the breeze. Scarlet nuzzled in my lap. While the air was cool, the morning sun was warm on my face. I closed my eyes, allowed my neck to relax as my head rested on the back of the chair. The sounds of my .18 acre of the world washed over me but didn't linger as my mind cleared and became still. I was so still, my thoughts quieted, for what length of time I don't know. And then a moment of clarity...

Holy cow! I think I'm meditating! 

While not my intention, I think perhaps that is what Silent Sunday has become - undefined meditation: a chance for me to recenter, regroup, and reinvigorate for another week of shows; a chance to clear my mind of thoughts and worries; a chance to focus on sanity; a chance to focus on what I need at that moment, and often it is silence.

Happy Silent Sunday!